The tide is turning against the porn industry. And they’re scared.

Is it just me or are more and more people beginning to wake up to the fact that porn is unhealthy?

I mean, when GQ tells men to quit porn before it ruins their life, Russell Brand’s video against porn goes viral, and atheist/agnostic sites like nofap.com are garnering followers by the thousands, something’s going on. Do you feel it? The slow but unrelenting tide turning against the porn industry?

Back in the 90's, while I was still immersed in porn, I was under the impression (a self-imposed one, perhaps) that sitting in a dark room, alone, masturbating to images of women pretending to like me was what all the cool kids were doing.

Now "cool kids watch porn" seems to me an oxymoron.

When I was around twelve years old, my friend told me that his dad kept a hidden stash of porn in his wardrobe. At the time I remember thinking, "man your dad is awesome." Now I think, "man your dad was creepy." Or, more charitably, "your poor, sad, father."

Maybe it's the work I'm engaged in, but it just seems that, to quote my favorite Twitter account—porn is lame (Follow their hilarious twitter account here).

And, it seems that my hunch may have some validity to it. This movement that I’m speaking of seems to have struck a nerve with the porn industry.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formally Morality In Media) shared an excerpt from an article in the porn industry’s trade publication that shows that even they can tell the tide is turning; and they're scared. Here's what they wrote:

I continually hear from industry that porn has become so ingrained in modern culture that it has now become virtually mainstream to the masses and there is no putting that Genie back in its bottle.

While I agree that adult entertainment has become much more accepted by a larger segment of modern society than it was pre-Internet, I believe we are beginning to see the pendulum swinging back towards more conservative values and while the Genie may or may not be able to be forced back into the bottle it can certainly be made to hide — one way or another.

…

The industry is seeing attacks coming from multiple fronts — not only government representatives and regulators but also financial institutions and online corporate giants that were once only too happy to be doing business with the industry. There have always been right wing and religious organizations that have fought to criminalize all pornography, online and offline — such as MIM (Morality In Media) — the difference now is that more and more are actually listening to these groups and taking them much more seriously.

Porn has recently been portrayed in the media as a “public health crisis in the US” that is destroying relationships, the family, causing people to leave the church, sexualizing children, contributing to alcohol and drug abuse and leading to an increase in sexual violence against women and children. It has even been claimed recently that watching porn shrinks the human brain — not kidding — look it up.

So why now after 20 years is the anti-porn movement gaining so much traction?"

The moral of the story? Battle on comrades!

So there you have it. Let's redouble our efforts, fighting porn in our own lives and helping others to fight it in theirs. Truth cannot not triumph (you should totally tweet that).

While battling the porn industry can feel, as someone has said, like "sitting in a rowboat throwing marbles at a battleship," it's terribly fun! And is, apparently, what all the cool kids are doing.

If you or someone you love is addicted to porn, download my new e-book, The Battle Plan, and my new audio presentation, The Hidden battle, for free here.

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Matt Fradd works for Covenant Eyes and is the author of the book Delivered: True Stories of Men and Women Who Turned From Porn to Purity. A popular speaker and Catholic apologist, he has addressed tens of thousands of people around the world and appeared on EWTN, ABC, and the BBC. Matt is also the founder of this website, ThePornEffect.com, which is dedicated to helping men and women break free from the vice of pornography. He lives in North Georgia, with his wife Cameron and their four children.